


ghosts of the living

by sevenfoxes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Lives, F/M, PTSD, Post War AU, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:14:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5135999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a terrible idea.</p><p>The medical tent is full of men, littered with the wounded that just rolled up, following men busy bellowing Captain America! over and over.  You had seen him then, making eyes at you even though he'd been ragged as a stray dog, bleeding in ripped clothes.  It isn't the first time a soldier has looked at you like a little bit of home he wants to touch, and you know it won't be the last.  He'd smiled and nodded politely, but the slick curve of his mouth let you know just what kind of man you'd be dealing with later.</p><p>And true to form, when you pluck the dog tags off his chest to match the name to the one you've scribbled on his chart, he runs a finger delicately over your hand and says, <i>The name's Bucky.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. before

**Author's Note:**

> So the first part of this was a tumblr fic inspired by an image from the first Cap movie:
> 
>   
>   
>     
> 
> 
> And I decided to write a short second part that ended up being almost 12K. This exists mostly because I miss OFCs and second person in this fandom. But REALLY, this exists because I wanted a fic where Bucky gets a bit of a somewhat-happy ending.
> 
> A couple warnings of things you will see in this: panic attacks, ptsd, references to domestic abuse (not involving bucky), violence, unprotected sex (and some minor consent issues around that, but nothing that would be triggering). There is also a detailed description of an attack during the war that may be disturbing to some.
> 
> As always, thanks to LG for being a trooper and looking over the majority of this. Any remaining dumb typos are my mistake.

This is a terrible idea.  
  
The medical tent is full of men, littered with the wounded that just rolled up, following men busy bellowing _Captain America!_ over and over.  You had seen him then, making eyes at you even though he'd been ragged as a stray dog, bleeding in ripped clothes.  It isn't the first time a soldier has looked at you like a little bit of home he wants to touch, and you know it won't be the last.  He'd smiled and nodded politely, but the slick curve of his mouth let you know just what kind of man you'd be dealing with later.  
  
And true to form, when you pluck the dog tags off his chest to match the name to the one you've scribbled on his chart, he runs a finger delicately over your hand and says, _The name's Bucky._  
  
_Ruth_ , you tell him and let the dog tags fall back to his skin.  Thirty seconds later, he has his hand on the small of your back, guiding you snug against him so he can kiss you.  Cautiously.  Carefully.  He's slow, as if he's worried that you'll have second thoughts, or won't let him, and it's so different than the other men you've had to deal with over the last year.  A lot of anger, a lot of mean hands and words, a lot of men who didn't listen when you said no.  
  
You don't understand him one little bit.  You know what these boys have been though, seen the nasty wound in his side and the bruises on his wrists that definitely tell you he's been strapped down, which you know means... torture.  You've seen a few that have survived come in and they're always broken beyond repair.  And yet here he is, kissing you soft and slow like a date back home in Philly.  
  
So you kiss him.  Because you want to.  Because it's been a long week of men dying and your hands are tired of stitching together skin and resetting bones and listening to boys who won't see another sun rise crying for their mothers.  Maybe you're looking for a bit of home, too.  
  
But it's reckless and you know it.  There isn't enough privacy here to be doing this kinda thing.  You're in one of the enclosed examination rooms in the back, sectioned off with canvas dividers that offer a decent amount of privacy, but not nearly the same as walls and locks.  The doc's already been in to see him and won't be back for at least an hour judging by the numbers outside, but there are officers checking in with the wounded too and you know that there's a chance they could walk in at any moment.  
  
But god help you, this boy can kiss.  It's wet and open, just the right amount of tongue, his teeth dragging on your bottom lip like a promise, and you don't protest when his hand slips down from the small of your back to the swell of your ass.  He's not crass and doesn't squeeze it, just keeps a gentle pressure that holds you right up against him.  
  
He's dirty and doesn't smell anywhere close to being fresh, but you bring your hands up and let them run through his hair, tangled and a little greasy, but still soft under your fingers.  
  
_Sweetheart_ , Bucky murmurs when he pulls out of the kiss and presses his mouth to the skin under your ear.  His hands grow more adventurous, more bold, sliding over your hips and up to your breasts, pressing against the soft swells, cupping them.  They slide down again quickly, down down down to your thighs until the skirt between them disappears.  He drags the modest hem up a bit until his warm palms are pressed right against the skin of your thighs, fingers lightly gripping the outside of both.  You've done so much worse with a boy, but somehow this feels so flagrantly indecent that you can feel the silly blush burn bright across your face.  
  
He drops to sit on the cot behind him and curls his hands behind your thighs to draw you between his legs and then down so you're straddling his lap.  When did this spiral so out of control?  You're wet enough that spread like this over his lap, you can feel it, your skirt so high on your thighs that it barely counts as a skirt anymore.  
  
When he reaches for you again, you say, _I can't_ , and he freezes immediately.  
  
It's not that you don't want it - you've been in the field for nearly eight months and you ain't got a fella waiting back home for you - it's only that any fraternization between nurses and soldiers is strictly forbidden.  Florence got tangled up with a pretty wounded Frenchman that had been rescued near Marseilles and ended up with a ticket back home and a baby in her belly.  
  
You aren't looking for that kind of trouble.  
  
_Can't do that here,_ you tell him, and the guilty look on his face lightens a bit.  _We'll get caught.  And I don't..._ you stutter a bit, embarrassed.  _I don't have a rubber._  
  
He smiles at you, that same quiet, almost sweet smile that he'd laid on you next to his friend out in the middle of camp, and leans in for another kiss.  Another gentle kiss that gets deep when you melt against him and open your mouth for him.  
  
Bucky slides his hand between your thighs achingly slow and covers you with a palm, just enough pressure to have you moan very quietly and press right down on it, your body wanting more.  
  
_How about this?_ he asks.  _Just this._  
  
You nod because yes, just this.  You want this.  You want more, but you'll take this because he's offering, because you're reckless, but not reckless enough to fuck a man without a rubber that you met an hour ago whose blood is under your fingernails.  
  
He kisses you and slides his hand without pretense right into your panties.  
  
And the first thing you feel is embarrassed, because as soon as he really touches you, you can feel exactly how wet you are.  Messy between the thighs like he's just finished fucking you instead of kissing you.  
  
But he just drops his forehead to your collarbone and sighs, _God you feel good.  No idea how good you feel, Jesus,_ and you just want to cry because it feels so damn good too. You've always had that little voice inside you that tells you who the good eggs are and the bad, and you won't regret letting this one between your legs.  He gets a few fingers inside of you, his thumb set against your clitoris, and just lets you rock against his hand as he kisses you blind.  
  
It doesn't take long.  You come quietly, fingers digging into his shoulders until he hisses and you remember he's hurt, kiss him as an apology.  Except he doesn't stop, keeps his fingers working slow until it feels like way too much, too much building inside of you.   
  
_Bucky, Bucky, Bucky,_ you start to chant, a little too loudly but not caring, not sure if you want him to stop or never stop, and he gives you a quiet, _shhhh,_ and presses his free hand over your mouth to keep you quiet.  That has your eyes rolling back into your head and coming so hard that for a brief second, it feels like your body isn't going to be able to hold itself upright.  As soon as he's sure your moaning is finished, he drops his hand from your mouth to the small of your back, holding you up a bit as you quake with last bits of your orgasm, your body dragging out.  
  
_Thanks, sweetheart,_ he says with a genuinely kind smile, like he's the one who's just come twice, and when he drags his hand out of your panties, he brings it right up to his mouth.  
  
(A few hours later, you raid the condom supply in the back of the med tent and don't feel a modicum of guilt.)


	2. after

The first time you think you see Bucky, it’s Christmas Eve and the snow won’t stop coming down. You’re an east coast girl. Philly had plenty of snow, but there’s something about the snow in New York City that makes it feel different. It’s heavier here.

It’s not the first time you think you recognize a face. There’s a lot of boys whose faces you see in the crowds here. You spent a year and a half in France, another year in Italy before they’d shipped you home just before the end of the war. You met a lot of men - met a lot of boys, too. So many that you can’t really picture the faces in your mind, just a mishmash of noses and cheeks and hollow eyes that make everyone feel like a ghost.

But you remember him. The only man you let touch you over there. You can see his face a lot in your dreams, the bright spot in a long, bloody three years.

He’s walking down the street near the bodega where you buy most of your groceries. He turns the corner onto Flatbush, and his profile nearly knocks you straight on your ass. You can remember the men screaming and the desperate way he looked up at you when he slid his fingers inside you. You remember how goddamn gentle he was later, when he laid you out on his cot and finally got between your legs properly, how he looked down at your face the entire time he was pressing into you, like he was still making sure you were okay with it, that you wanted it, that you liked it.

By the time you get to the corner, he’s disappeared, nothing but snow and the angry hiss of cars as they speed down the street.

This is why you left Philly.

Only, it seems, the ghosts have followed you here, too.

 

\--

 

You don’t see him again until the middle of spring, when you finally get a reprieve from the snow and ice, the winter cold hounding the city right up until April. It goes from freezing to blistering hot, warm enough to walk through the city without a jacket, your stockings making your legs feel uncomfortably warm.

You’re heading home after finishing up your shift mid-morning when you spot him near the shoe repair shop you took the pair of heels you ruined in a grate. He’s heading toward you this time, and there’s no mistaking it: it’s him. He moves the way you remember, something between graceful and a force of nature.

A few feet away from you, he looks up and catches your eye. You’re still wearing your uniform, a little different than the one you wore serving overseas, but not enough that he’ll be able to tell the difference.

You both stop abruptly, and his eyes go a little wide, like he’s not quite sure he believes that he’s seeing you either. It seems impossible for you to have run into each other a world away from where you last met.

You try to remember his name, but there were so many of them; so many names stamped on so many dog tags. You remember the name of his friend who drove his plane into the sea to save the world, you know that the man standing in front of you in a well-cut suit was one of his Howling Commandos, but his name escapes you now, only because you’re searching so hard for it. You keep going back to that memory of him, bruised and bloody, staring up at you like you were something special, something he had to touch. You can feel the raised letter of those tags under the pads of your blood-stained fingers in that shitty tent, but they don’t spell anything.

Then you remember his voice.

_The name’s Bucky._

“Bucky?” you ask hesitantly, even though you’re sure you’re right. You remember thinking at the time that it was the perfect name for him. So few men suit their names, but he does.

Bucky. Bucky Barnes.

“Ruth?” he asks, and that shocks you so hard your jaw nearly hits the warm concrete under your feet. You think you only told him your name once, a courtesy because he had told you his. In that triage space, his hand between your legs, and that night, when you’d used your stolen rubbers with him in the privacy of the single tent given to him by Captain Rogers, he’d called you sweetheart or doll, but never used your name.

You didn’t think he’d remember your name. You weren’t sure he’d even remember you. The fact that he does makes a warm curl of pleasure unfurl in your gut.

“Yeah,” you say when you realize the silence has gone on a little too long to not be awkward. “How are you?”

The smile he gives you makes your toes curl up in your heels. Two and a half years later, and he’s still handsome as all getout, still making you think ungodly things that Father Michael would have give you a whole lifetime of Hail Marys to repent. When he steps closer to you, the smell of him hits you like a cast iron skillet. A good cologne, but the spicy hint of man under that.

God, it’s been so damn long.

“Good, good,” he says, though he doesn’t look it, not a bit. You don’t know him well enough to know if he’s a good liar or not, but everything tells you that he’s not. You’ve seen a lot of men back from the war come through the hospital, and they all have the same haunted look that Bucky’s wearing right now. Hollow, bruised eyes, the shadow of death under them. “You?”

He may be a bad liar, but you’re one of the best, so you smile as you say, “Same.”

 

\--

 

Bucky takes you down to a diner he says has the best breakfast this side of the Atlantic. You’ve seen the small storefront before, but have never stopped in for a meal; truth be told, you haven’t explored the city much at all. It’s run by a really lovely Greek couple that Bucky introduces you to like he knows them personally. Nina’s baking some kind of Greek pastry while Gust mans the grill, and the smell of it makes your mouth water.

Working with so many vets makes you hypervigilant, and you immediately pick up on the way he tilts his left side from you when you walk to the booth, how he’s so right hand dominant, even when it’s easier to reach with his left for the salt or sugar. There had been a few stories in the paper when they’d found Bucky down in the gorge a couple days after he’d fallen, but none had described in any detail what his injuries had been, only that it was a miracle he had survived at all.

By then, Captain America was already dead.

There’s a little small talk as you order. He asks about the uniform and you nod as Nina slides two cups of coffee in front of you.

“Yeah, I work down at St. Mike’s. Mostly night shifts, but you gotta work up the ladder before they’ll give you the good ones.” You dump more cream into your coffee and he gives you a withering look. He’s drinking his black and yours looks like it might be a milkshake instead. “I just can’t get enough of it. We always had to drink it black when we had it in the camp. Pretty sure my first coffee back home was more cream than coffee.”

You don’t tell him you’ve been doing that with a lot of things these days. You know your hips are a little wider than normal, but you’d been so rail thin during the war, not enough food in the camps most of the time, and the nurses had always been the last to receive their rations. You think it looks good on you though; your hip bones have finally stopped sticking up from under your skin.

(You’d been a bit nervous when he’d finally taken off your clothes in that tent: too much bone and not enough meat, your breasts smaller since you’d dropped so much weight. But he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared, because he’d just made a grateful noise as he touched your thighs, palmed at your ass and sucked at your nipples until you were desperate.)

He tells you that he’s working for the phone company in Manhattan over eggs, hashbrowns and sausage. It’s odd to think of someone with as much skill as Bucky has working such a pedantic job, but he speaks about it with a spark in his eye, and you figure he’s earned a little bit of quiet. You talk about the hospital, about liking the nurses and hating most of the doctors who spend a lot of time speaking to you as though you’re some doe-eyed child, rather than a woman who has sewn together men nearly split in two, taken dying confessions, and earned your own war wounds.

Bucky nods, lets you speak without interrupting, and it strikes you that it’s the first time since you’ve been back that you feel like someone’s really hearing you. Your parents are too filled with grief over losing Thomas to bother with the daughter who actually returned to them, and your other siblings are too young to carry the burden of your memories. The friends you left behind when you joined the war are mostly married, too involved with the things you used to enjoy, but now only find frivolous.

(Alice, the only other nurse you served with that survived, lives out in California. You don’t write or call.)

You reach for your purse and he grabs your hand. It’s so warm, and for a second, you remember how it felt the first time he slipped that hand between your legs.

“Please,” he says with maybe the first genuine smile you’ve seen on his face. “My treat.”

After, he walks you home even though you assure him that you’re just fine making it there by yourself. He stops on the stoop of your building and gives you a sweet kiss on the cheek.

“Take care of yourself, Ruth.”

When he pulls back, he rubs his thumb over the damp spot on your cheek where his mouth had just been.

“Take care of yourself, Bucky,” you reply, and feel his eyes on you as you turn away.

 

\--

 

It’s June when you see him again. You’ve been back to the Gianopoulos’s diner a few times, though you swear to yourself it isn’t because you had hoped you’d run into him and more because it’s the only place you’ve been able to find that serves Baklava.

He’s waiting for you outside the hospital after your shift. Sylvia only lives a few blocks away from you and she takes her husband’s car when she works the night shift, so she drives you home. You’re halfway to the car before you notice him resting near the lightpost out front.

“Ruth,” he calls out, casual as anything, like he’s not waiting outside for you in the middle of the night. He pushes off the post with his hip and walks toward you slow and easy.

“He yours?” Sylvia whispers into your shoulder, and even though he’s not, not even a little, you nod.

Bucky steps closer, the light from the lamp above him makes his profile glow. God, he’s a handsome man. Sylvia lets out a sad sigh as she leans into you again and asks, “You want me to stick around?”

You shake your head. “No, I’m good. Thanks, Sylvia.”

Sylvia grins wickedly at you as she steps away, heading for the beat up Ford. “Enjoy yourself, you lucky thing.”

“Hey there,” you say when Sylvia’s taillights disappear into the night. He bites at his bottom lip for a second as he stares at you quietly. The attention makes you uncomfortable, makes you want to squirm.

“Hey,” he finally answers back. “Thought you might be up for another breakfast. My treat.”

“It’s four am,” you tell him, even though you want to say yes. You’re bone tired and aching for bed, but you’ve spent the last eight weeks dreaming about him like some silly schoolgirl. These are the dreams that keep the dark ones at bay, so you indulge yourself.

He cracks a smile. “I know a place that’s open all night.”

 

\--

 

“You see Ruth’s sweetheart?” Ethel crows to Lucy, who’s scowling at the reports in front of her. “What a looker!”

“Looks like Cary Grant,” Vera adds, dramatically fanning herself as she grins. “Saw him waiting for you outside yesterday morning, Ruth.” She turns to Sylvia. “What’s that been, like every day so far this week?”

You just roll your eyes and jot down Mr. Hearn’s blood pressure into his record.

“He should be sweet on her,” Sylvia says. “My girl Ruth’s a catch and a half.”

That makes you laugh and smile, a little blush over your cheeks.

“God, what I’d give to get a man like that between the sheets,” Ethel sighs. “I mean, bless Jimmy, he’s a wonderful man, but he ain’t seen his toes for the better part of three years.”

Lucy drops her head to the desk and starts laughing. Clara, one of the senior nurses and a devout Christian who spends most of her time disapproving of the shift girls, turns from the far desk and gives them all an unimpressed looked.

“I ain’t joking,” Ethel says, unmindful of Clara and her disapproving eye. Then she whispers, “I bet you he’s got the prettiest ass ever. Like two farm-fresh eggs in a hanky.”

Vera howls with laughter, which provokes a loud, “Really now!” from Clara as the rest of the girls devolve into giggles.

When you leave that night, Bucky’s waiting for you outside, a small bouquet of red flowers in his hand. When he turns and offers you his arm, you can’t help but look down at the back of his pants.

“What?” he asks, sweet confusion on his face as you can’t hold back the peals of laughter that bubble up inside of you.

 

\--

 

The first time he takes you to bed, you finally see the damage the fall has done.

He’s real eager to get your clothes off - quick, but not careless enough that you have to warn him off from ripping the delicate, lacy material of your dress. Most men are so eager to get you in your underclothes that they’re too busy looking at your chest or ass to notice much. But he watches you intently, his eyes mapping your responses like he’s looking for something.

“Ruth,” he says softly, his thumb brushing over the apple of your cheek before he leans in and kisses you.

There’s something about the way that he touches you that is unsettling. You’re not used to being touched like this. You’ve always liked it a bit rougher, a little manhandling, but nothing’s felt better than this, the gentle slide of his hand over you. There’s a reverence in his touch that wasn’t there the last time you did this. Back in that tent, it had been sweet and slow, but it had been the gentle fumbling of a man trying to find himself again. The softness had come from a place of uncertainty.

There’s nothing uncertain about how he touches you now. It reminds you of the moment you realized in that tent with him that you weren’t going to regret letting him between your legs. You’re not naive enough to believe that Bucky is without flaws, that there isn’t a part of him that he hides from you, but the way he touches you makes the seed he had sown in that tent flourish, the understanding of what lay beneath the tortured flesh.

No man’s ever touched you like this before.

When you start reaching for his clothes, you pick up on his tension immediately, though he tries to mask it with confidence. Bucky’s breathing goes a bit off when you unbutton his shirt, the movement ragged under your fingers, even though his mouth curves into a slick smirk that doesn’t come close to hiding the shade of fear in his eyes. When his undershirt comes off, you school yourself solid so you don’t let whatever’s waiting for you underneath show on your face.

The scars extend through his shoulder and down around his chest. His arm is absolutely covered in them, the biggest one deep enough that it looks like it probably touched bone when fresh. You don’t stop to ask him about it, but you catalogue the way he moves it. The first time he took you out to that diner, you could tell that he struggled to close his fingers around things, but now as he touches you, you can definitely tell there’s nerve damage.

You don’t try to touch them, instead letting your hands fall on his hips and belly, a finger catching on his belt loop to tug him into you properly.

“Come on,” you tell him with a smile, letting your mouth settle near his collar bone.

You’ve seen wounds far worse than this before, chunks ripped from bodies and scars that look like they’ll never heal. You want to tell him this, that whatever he’s built up in his head isn’t what you see, but you know it would fall on deaf ears. Bucky's body is beautiful: lean and toned, better looking than the scrappy, unfed man he’d been in the camp, scars or not.

His hand is spread between your shoulder blades, over the strap of your bra; it unsnaps easily under his fingers as he kisses you, his hand chasing the straps down over your arms so he can drag them back up over the curves of your breasts. It’s a very intentional tease that has you shivering against him, his mouth curling into a small smile as he feels it.

Your hand drops onto his shoulders out of reflex when he takes the kiss deep, sucking on your tongue just a little, and as soon as you feel the bumpy skin under your right palm, he breaks off, sucking in a startled breath.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice choked. His eyes betray a deep hurt, like your hand is a red hot brand.

You don’t take your hand away, but you don’t do more than just let it rest on his skin, letting him accept the weight of it. “I really don’t care,” you tell him in the most level, earnest voice you can muster, because you really, really don’t. It doesn’t bother you, doesn’t intrigue you, doesn’t matter to you in the slightest.

He doesn’t make to move you, so you just let you hands settle there a moment before you slide them both up the back of his neck to drag his mouth back down to yours. He’s cupping your face in seconds, urging your mouth open, pouring himself inside like he wants to get lost.

Somehow you end up on your back on the bed, the realization of the sheets against your back sudden even though you’re pretty sure you’ve been resting on them for a lot longer than you think.

Leaning down over you the way he is, his dog tags drag lightly against the skin of your chest; he’s only got one chain on, but there are two sets of dog tags hanging from it. When you reach for his belt, he tugs them over his head with his right hand and puts them on the small night table next to your bed.

Bucky lets you unbuckle his belt and pop the button on his pants before he pulls back, out of your reach, a slippery smile spreading on his face. Running his hands up and down your thighs, he urges you a little farther up the bed and settles between your legs.

“Wanted to do this the first time I saw you,” he says, hovering over your lower body. You don’t really know what he’s talking about until he scoots low enough that he can lift your left knee so it’s resting over his shoulder.

Oh. _Oh_. He’d been talking a bit of a blue streak that night in the tent, mentioned this a couple times, wanting to get his mouth on you and being disappointed that the shitty cot and wet, muddy floor wouldn’t really allow for it. But you’d thought it’d been a lot of brass talk. No one’s ever done that to you before.

He teases a bit. Plays with the edge of your panties and drags his teeth over the sensitive skin of your thighs until you’re mad with want, which is why you miss where his mouth has wandered to until you hear him suck in a terrible breath.

It’s not loud, but you can feel the difference when the air hits the scar tissue on your lower abdomen, the way his body suddenly stops and tightens. He doesn’t linger long though, doesn’t touch them or ask about them, just keeps skimming down until his breath is hitting you square over where you’ve soaked straight through your panties.

A second later, he's tugging them down roughly, leaving them caught on your ankle pressed against the firm muscle of his back.

He spreads you open with his thumbs, his mouth pressing over you, warm and wet. When he licks into you, you reach down and clutch at his hair, gasp a desperate prayer to a god that stopped listening to you a long time ago.

 

\--

 

You catch him with a woman once.

A few of the girls decide to head into Manhattan for a night on the town. For a city as big as New York, it can be surprisingly small, so when you see Bucky sitting in a small cafe, you feel a smile spread over your face. Sometimes he makes you smile so hard it feels like your face is going to split in two; you don’t think you’ve ever been as silly over a boy as you are for Bucky, and for the first time in nearly five years, your heart feels light again.

Until you see the very beautiful brunette sitting across from Bucky.

She’s smiling, but she looks a little sad, and for some reason, her face is familiar to you. You’re better with voices than you are with faces, but there’s something about this face that speaks to you.

None of the boys you’ve ever gone out with have been scoundrels, mostly by design. You don’t have the time of day for philanderers, and while Bucky’s handsome enough to play the cad (and had in his early years by his own admission), you know he isn’t one. So you stop as Sara and Millie stare into a dressmaker’s storefront and try to figure out where you know this woman’s face from.

She’s stunning, and while you aren’t the jealous type, you’re insecure. There’s been more than a few times where you’ve stopped to wonder why Bucky hasn’t picked up one of the dozens of girls a hell of a lot prettier than you are that look his way when you’re out with him. Girls a bit more whole, girls that can sleep through the night and don’t have bits of metal still in their gut. Girls like the one sitting across from him now.

You step closer to the curb and watch the two of them speak to one another.

Something must give you away, because a moment later Bucky’s turning toward you. There’s some surprise and maybe a little bit of guilt on his face, but there’s something else there too that sets your suspicious nature off.

So you wave and offer a smile, though you don’t really feel it. Bucky’s face is tense, but he smiles back, motions for you to come over. He frowns a bit when you shake your head; you’re already late, and the show starts in a little less than ten minutes. Then Millie’s arm is wrapping around yours and tugging you down the street, and you find yourself grateful for the distraction.

Bucky’s waiting for you inside your apartment when you get home a few hours later. He rises from the couch when you step inside the door, and you try to school your heartbeat back to something that doesn’t make your chest ache. He’d scared you when you walked in, mostly because he doesn’t have a key to your apartment.

He speaks before you can question him on it.

“You didn’t come over,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets.

You take a deep breath. Unto the breach, it seems. “We were late for the show.” A partial truth, and the look on his face tells you he knows as much.

When you don’t make any move to get closer, he does instead, his long stride eating up the space between the two of you. “It wasn’t anything, I swear,” he tells you. He doesn’t sound guilty, but he does sound nervous.

“Okay,” you say. “I didn’t think it was.” The look of relief on his face makes you feel a little guilty yourself, because while you didn’t think he was stepping out on you, your thoughts on him weren’t generous either. There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you, a lot of things he gives half-truths on, and while you thought at first it was something you could deal with - he lets you have your own secrets - there’s a part of you that worries about it.

He takes another step to bring you face to face and pulls his hand out of his pocket, letting it drift over the skin of your forearm before grasping yours lightly. It’s his right hand; he still doesn’t touch you much with his left.

“She was Steve’s girl.” And oh, there’s the guilt mixed in with sadness and something that makes his voice go rough and hurt. He rarely ever invokes Steve Rogers’s name around you, which makes it jarring when you remember that _Steve_ is Captain America. “Got me the job at the phone company.”

(And now you know why that face was so familiar.

And so sad.)

 

\--

 

It’s always the screaming first. Always first. That terrible sharp sound that reminds you of glass breaking. The men’s screams always merge, just one everlasting note, a choir of agony. But there’s always one scream you can recognize, that you can place immediately. Theresa’s scream had been so brutal, so frightened, that it had made your blood run cold even though you’d listened to more than a few men scream their last breaths.

You hear her scream and then you see the uniforms out of the corner of your eye as you run, the swastikas stitched into shoulders and chests. Sharp pain in your gut, mud in your face and hands, a boot on your back.

The quiet that comes when the screaming stops is almost worst than the noise itself. A void of life in a space that should have been filled with it. In the moments you had been bleeding to death in the field, you suddenly understood all the violent men that had crossed your path, the ones who had fought you even though you were trying to help them, had wrenched and clawed and screamed as death took them.

The violence is louder in the quiet.

“Ruth? Ruth, wake up!” you hear a voice call out to you, a little muffled, but tinny.

You’re not in the field. You’re in bed. You’re in Bucky’s bed. You’re in Bucky’s bed in Brooklyn, between sheets that smell like the late-summer air and loose tobacco, even though Bucky doesn’t smoke.

You can feel his hands on you, gentle. The quiet twitch of the damaged nerves in his left hand that is cupping your hip, the other curled around your cheek as he shakes you awake, his face hovering over yours in the low darkness.

There’s a moment of quiet as you get your bearings, jerking upright as the sheets slip off you and Bucky’s hands drift away. You feel it welling up inside your chest, the tightness you recognize from the days when it was too much: too much blood, too much pain, too much death. You try to fight it off, but when it comes, you just let it pour out, shoving your grief into your heads, hiding your face from him.

When you were younger, crying always made you feel better, like a cleansing rain. Now, crying just feels like rubbing salt in a wound.

He doesn’t make the mistake of trying to grab onto you or try to pull you into his arms. Between sobs, you feel him quietly arrange his body around you so that he’s touching you, but giving you enough space so you don’t feel trapped.

“Hey,” he says quietly once the loudest of the sobs have subsided. “Hey, take a breath.” His hand runs up and down your back in a soothing circle as he whispers to you.

He doesn’t tell you that everything is going to be all right.

You’re grateful for that more than anything else.

 

\--

 

Bucky only asks you once about the scars, then never again. You tell him you got hurt over there, and leave it at that. The shocking part is that he lets you, that he nods with something akin to understanding and slips his arm around your hip, going back to reading the paper as you try to finish repairing a pair of stockings that you know are a hopeless cause.

It’s one of the reasons you care about him as much as you do. He’s the first man who has ever let you be, who hasn’t pushed for more than you’re willing to give.

Back in Philly, your mother had set you up on a few dates once she’d deemed you healthy enough to get back to whatever life she’d imagined for you before the war. They’d all been kind enough, but they either danced around the war or bluntly broached the subject with you like it made them brave somehow. One of the papers had covered the ambush in Navis, so many of the locals, particularly those who knew your family well, knew exactly what had happened to you.

Everyone wanted to treat you like a shattered doll or a brave survivor, and you had felt like neither. You hated the way everyone wanted you to suddenly feel safe, like putting an ocean between the soil that had soaked up your blood, that had consumed your brother, would suddenly offer you a bit of protection. They wanted you to be okay, they wanted to make you okay.

You’ll never really be okay.

Bucky doesn’t push or prod, doesn’t ask you if you’re okay or demand that you are. Sometimes it feels like you’re both a little broken, a puzzle of shards that fit together.

At night, Bucky doesn’t scream. He doesn’t yell. He trembles and he sweats, he whispers out names, he cries in his sleep hard enough that the tears slide down his cheeks onto yours.

When he wakes, he clings to you, presses his face into your breast and tightens his arms around your chest so hard that it almost hurts. But you let him. You let him because you need it too, something here to anchor you to the world, to keep the ghosts of a quiet mind at bay.

But he can be cold, too. In the mornings after particularly rough nights, he pulls away. He’s quiet and withdrawn, drinks his coffee and barely touches the eggs and toast you make him. The whiplash hurts more than you expect it to, but you try to remember the parts of him that are warm and kind, to extend to him the space and consideration he gives you.

You feel like you know him, that he lays most of himself bare for you, that he is mostly truthful, at least where it counts. But in the moments he pulls away, the mornings you wake up to find strange bruises on his torso and swollen knuckles, you also feel like there are parts of him that you don’t know at all.

 

\--

 

He gets drunk a bit more than you like. It makes you real nervous.

Except Bucky’s never been a mean drunk. Mary Beth’s husband came back from the war a terrible drunk with a nasty temper; she’d survived a few months of black eyes and bruises before she’d caught a train back to Tacoma to stay with her parents.

Bucky’s never raised a hand to you in the six months you’ve been seeing one another. He keeps a lot of secrets and he can be callous at times, but he’s never once hurt you, never once laid a finger on you in anything other than kindness. The times where he's cold almost hurt more than a fist, but it’s never out of maliciousness.

When Bucky drinks, you can see the sadness he spends most of his time hiding from you.

One night, he shows up close to midnight at your door, drunk as a skunk. As soon as you open it, you can smell the liquor and cigarette smoke on him from whatever bar he’s fallen out of. He’s not clumsy, but he is morose, especially when he sees the look of disappointment on your face as you help him into your apartment and out of his jacket. By the time you’re working on his shoes, there are silent tears streaking down his cheeks.

He’s mumbling something about Steve when you go for his cufflinks, your fingers slipping on the smooth metal as you unfasten his cuffs, extra careful with the left one. You can’t really tell what he’s saying when he gets like this, but it's sad and quiet, and full of the sort of hurt Bucky never normally lets you see.

The only time he really talks about Steve is when he’s drunk.

When you stand to go throw his jacket over the chair in front of your vanity, his eyes fill with panic and he clings to you, his chest heaving with emotion.

“You don’t understand,” he whispers, gripping your wrist with his trembling left hand like it’s the only thing keeping him from falling off a cliff. “You don’t understand. He never-- he never would have done it.”

“What?” you ask quietly. He rambles like this when he’s had too much to drink, and you’ve long since stopped trying to follow it. Mostly, you don’t think he’s speaking to you at all.

He lets out a rough hiccup, then whispers, “Steve.”

“Shh.” You hush him as you push him backward, making him lie back against the bed. You don’t even bother with his belt or pants, just wanting him to relax, to sleep. He flops over, resting his sweaty brow against the cool skin of your chest, shivering as you run a hand through his hair.

When you wake up, he’s not in bed with you anymore. You jerk up in shock, your heart pounding as you survey the room.

“Hey,” he says from the chair near your window. The morning sun is bleeding into your apartment enough that you can see his face relatively clearly. He’s got dark circles under his eyes “I’m so sorry.”

You let your heart calm for a moment before you answer. “It’s okay,” you tell him.

“It’s not,” he tells you. He’s got a hand on the dog tags hanging around his neck. You’ve touched them before, so you know the name that’s pressed on one set isn’t Bucky’s. “It won’t happen again.”

He’s a man of his word: it doesn’t.

(Though you think he just stops showing up at your door.)

 

\--

 

(You ask him once, after one of the nights he shows up at your door drunk and sleeps off the booze in your bed, curled up and shaking with nightmares until the dawn comes. There’s eggs in front of him that you know he won’t eat, and his gaze is aimed out your living room window as he drinks his coffee. The coldness is back, the distance that makes you feel like he’s a million miles away instead of across the table from you. You can’t keep yourself from asking, _Why would you think it’s your fault?_ and the look that slaps across his face is somewhere between deep hurt and utter betrayal.

You don’t ask him again.)

 

\--

 

When you tell him you’re not going home for Thanksgiving, he asks you to come home with him to his parent’s place in Flatbush.

He asks it casually, like it’s not the first time you’d be meeting his family, but he’s earnest too, which lets you know that he’s not being flippant about it.

You know that his mother’s a churchgoing woman, like your own mother, and you’re not sure if you can face her knowing you’ve basically been living in sin with her only son. You spend most of your nights at Bucky’s place now, your apartment slowly becoming little more than storage and a place you lay your head a day or two a week. You keep a few uniforms at his place in the second dresser he picked up at a flea market for you, and your spare set of curlers and makeup bag is in the cupboard under the sink in his bathroom. Mrs. Agostino, Bucky’s upstairs neighbour, gives you a few dirty looks catching you coming out of Bucky’s place in the wee hours for the early morning shift, but other than that, no one seems to care that you’ve shacked up with Bucky without a ring on your finger.

But mothers _know_. And Bucky’s mother will care.

Like he can read your mind, he says, “Ma doesn’t know anything about my private life. I’ve told her about you, but not much more than that. Plus, I had a wild youth.” He kisses your cheek. “She mostly thinks you’re far too good for me.”

You know Catholic women and their sons. Your mother had worshipped Thomas despite his numerous indiscretions. “Nice try,” you say, leaning far enough away from his side that you can poke him in the ribs gently. He smiles down at you, tucked under his arm as you walk together.

“Really,” he says, tugging you against him as you take a shortcut through Prospect Park. “Ma’s been needling me for weeks to get you to come visit, and Rebecca’s nosey as all getout over you, so you’d be doing me a favour.”

You know it’s a bit of a lie, but you still smile so hard your cheeks start to hurt a bit. So you say yes, because secretly you’re a little nosey about his family, too.

You bake a pumpkin pie, even though you’ve never been handy enough in the kitchen for your mother’s liking. You bake two the night before and let him have a slice of one the next morning to make sure that you’re not about to poison his family, which makes him laugh when you tell him.

“Notice you don’t mind poisoning me,” he jokes, shoving another forkful into his mouth. You smile as he reaches for another slice after finishing off the one on his plate.

You buy a pretty new dress down at Saks that costs about a week’s worth of pay, but earns its price back in spades when Bucky’s eyes get a little wide when he sees you, the breathless way he says, “Wow,” as he kisses your cheek.

The blue is a nice colour on you and the hem is modest enough that you can wear it if you ever decide to go back to church again, which isn’t likely, but the only way you can let yourself buy a dress this expensive.

Though you’re nervous on the way over in the cab, dinner goes a lot more smoothly than you expect it to. You’re actually surprised at how friendly his mother is. She gives you a hug when you walk in the door, and says, “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” when you hand her the pie. She is kind and warm, and seems to genuinely like you, which is a relief.

His father is a bit of a different story. He smiles at you with kind eyes, but doesn’t make a move to shake your hand or give you a hug. He and Bucky exchange a handshake and a few cordial words when they arrive, but you can tell immediately that whatever relationship they have is strained and more than a little cold, a hunch that is confirmed when Bucky’s father disappears into the small drawing room around the corner and shuts the door.

Rebecca Barnes is a handful and a half. Eighteen and every inch of it. Apparently she’s earned herself a spot at college - wants to study medicine, Bucky tells you proudly - and spends most of the evening chattering about moving down to Pennsylvania for school. As proud as Bucky is of her, you can see the utter devotion that Rebecca has for him. During the small tiffs she and her mother have over the course of the night, Rebecca always defers to Bucky when he steps in with a stiff word and a light reprimand for his sharp-tongued sister.

You’d never had that with Thomas, who had been rather unenamoured with his siblings. It makes you ache a bit for your younger siblings.

After dinner, you spend an hour chatting with Rebecca. Rebecca pesters you for ages about Philadelphia before Mrs. Barnes interjects with a tired sigh, asking her to give you a break, which starts another tense spat between mother and daughter until Bucky steps in, pinching Rebecca’s cheek and baiting her into conversation.

As you leave, you notice the framed photo sitting on the mantle over the fireplace. Bucky - at least ten years younger than he is now - has his arm thrown over the shoulder of a boy whose face is familiar.

You’d heard rumours about Steve Rogers’ formative years, but you’d never imagined him quite as small as he looks in the photo.

It hurts as you realize you’ve never seen Bucky as happy as he looks in the photo either.

 

\--

 

You do go home for Christmas. It takes you a few days to realize quickly that while it was once home, it isn’t home anymore. Your mother still has a distant look in her eyes and your father barely speaks to you at all. Your younger brother stays in Raleigh over the Christmas break and your younger sister tries to spend as little time as possible in the house, staying out with friends more than your parents would have ever allowed you or Thomas before the war. Mostly, it feels like you’re standing in the shipwreck that used to be home, the flotsam of the family you used to be.

It’s a relief when you get off the train at Grand Central and see Bucky waiting for you on the platform. You hadn’t told him when you’d be getting in before you left, but somehow, you’re not surprised to see him leaning against a pillar on the platform, the red scarf you gave him for Christmas wrapped around his neck and his hands in the pockets of his coat.

Bucky kisses you a bit boldly for being out in public, his hand dropping down to rest right over the rise of your ass, pressing your hips into his.

“Trip go okay?” he asks, a little breathless as he pulls away, already reaching down for your bag.

You nod, not quite ready to talk about what a disaster your family has become. It took you a while to realize how unmoored the loss of your family has made you feel, and it’s not a feeling you want to press onto Bucky.

He hires a taxi to take you back to his place, his hand in yours, fingers slotted together. He’s got a pensive look on his face, like something’s wrong, but you know asking him about it won’t result in a truthful answer, so you stare quietly out the window and let him run his thumb over yours.

You’re barely in the door before it’s slammed shut behind you and Bucky has you pressed up against it. He’s a little frantic as he kisses you, and his hands are rough enough in trying to divest you of your coat that they tear loose a button that pings gently on his hardwood floor.

“Missed you,” he mumbles as he bites at the corner of your jaw, your hands clawing at his coat and shoving it gracelessly off his shoulders. You let him press you into the door hard enough that it smarts, his hands tearing at your stockings and skirt zipper before he backs off only to pull you across the foyer and toward his bedroom.

Normally, Bucky takes his time. It had been strange the first time, letting him kiss you for ages before he made a move to get his hand under your skirt. He’s spent hours between your legs with his fingers and his mouth, enough time that now you don’t blush when he tells you he wants to get his tongue inside you, when he won’t stop staring at your face when he’s pressing his fingers inside you.

Tonight, though, your back has barely hit the bed before Bucky is between your legs, pressing his cock into you, the thick slide just the right side of painful. It doesn’t truly hurt, it just feels overwhelming; you’ve never been with a man who gives himself over the way Bucky does. Inside you, on top of you, in your head. Always.

You come shockingly fast, quick enough that even Bucky’s eyes go a little wide when you gasp and arch your back, your entire body shaking underneath him. There are moments with him where you can’t get over how good it feels, the things he can wring out of your body that no one else has been able to. He makes you feel like you’re coming apart sometimes, like he’s found the stitch inside of you keeping your mind and body together and just pulls until you slowly separate.

As you come down, he moves inside you slowly, knowing you’re always a bit sensitive after you come, even though it must be killing him to hold back. His breath is terribly ragged, his arms shaking as he holds the bulk of his weight off of you. Eyes closed, he drops his forehead against yours and breathes against your mouth.

Eventually, his tenuous grasp on restraint breaks.

“Ruth,” he begs. “Ruth, I can’t-- I gotta-- _please_.”

You nod and tug him down, tuck your hips up in a way that lets him slip a little deeper, a hard, crazed sound falling from his mouth as he does.

You’re still a bit out of it, but when he starts up his rough rhythm again, your body lights up instantly. Usually, you only feel the warm aftershocks of your orgasm when Bucky lasts longer than you do and needs to finish after, but this time, the arousal unfurls inside you anew, and you can feel your body reaching for that peak again.

The sound between your bodies is obscene: wet and sharp, your thighs covered in his sweat and the slick being pushed out of you. It feels filthy and perfect, and when his hands stop supporting his weight and instead grip at your hips, the pressure just adds to the enormity of your body’s surrender.

“Bucky,” you whisper, your mind coming back to you enough to realize neither of you pulled a rubber from his nightstand. “Bucky, you gotta pull out.”

You’re not sure if he hears you, but a second later, his hands roughly tip your hips hard enough that his pelvis slams right up against your clit and your body _explodes_ , a shocked gasp that turns into a rough, strangled moan. One hand in his hair and the other gripping the headboard, you shake and shake and shake.

You barely feel him finish inside you, just the blissed out whispers of, _I love you_ , somewhere under your ear.

When you wake, you realize you don’t remember drifting off. He’s not inside you anymore, and your body is cool enough that you’ve probably been asleep for a while, even with the warm expanse of his chest pressed up against yours. Bucky’s awake though, his left arm curled around your body and his right thumb brushing back and forth over your ring finger.

“You ever think about it?”

You smile, still a little drunk on sleep and sex. “Think about what?”

When he doesn’t answer, just draws his nail against the soft skin of your finger, it dawns on you a little, your blood going a bit cold as his words roll over you.

The two of you haven’t ever talked about making it official. He’s dropped gossamer hints about it, usually in moments like this, half-asleep and naked, where it could easily be passed off as a joke. For you, it’s just too much.

(There’s some days you finish a shift and find yourself barely hanging on. You sleep better with Bucky wrapped around you, but you worry endlessly about growing too accustomed to it. It’s the reason you never stay at his place more than three days in a row. You know there’s going to be a day where he looks at you and finally sees how broken you really are.)

“No,” you whisper, because you’ve always been torn between the things you want and the things you think yourself capable of.

 

\--

 

The second the phone rings, you know. It’s too late to be anything but the phone call that you knew would be coming because you’ve never believed he worked at the phone company.

It’s Vera. You haven’t spoken to her since she transferred to a hospital in Manhattan last month, though you’re supposed to be visiting her and her husband for supper in a few weeks.

“It’s Bucky,” she tells you, her voice a whisper, which is the first clue. Vera is not the kind of woman who whispers. “There isn’t any official paperwork, but I recognized that face the moment they wheeled him in.” Your heart sinks as you turn on the lamp next to the bed and find that it is indeed the middle of the night. You feel almost frantic with worry.

The next words are spoken in a voice that feels ripped from your chest. “Is he okay?”

There’s quiet on the line before you hear Vera whisper, “It’s not good, Ruth.”

It’s near three in the morning by the time you get to the hospital, a sympathetic cabbie ignoring the way you are crying openly in the back of his taxi as he double-times it into the heart of Manhattan.

When you get to the room number that Vera gave you, the woman from the coffee shop is just inside the doorway, two men in dark suits flanking her. They step toward you like you’re a threat and you recoil.

“It’s quite all right,” she tells the two men guarding Bucky’s room. “She’s Barnes’s girl.”

You’re not sure why that makes you as angry as it does, but in that moment, you want to sink your fingers into something and rip it apart.

 

\--

 

The nurses and doctors don’t fight you about visiting hours, mostly thanks to the men outside Bucky’s room that swap out every few hours. The woman - Peggy Carter - doesn’t tell you much, but then again, you don’t ask her much either. You know that he took a bullet in his lower abdomen and that from road burn on his arms and legs, the truck he fell off of was moving at quite a clip. His face is banged up too, cuts held together by butterfly bandages.

For a while, they think they’re going to have to remove his spleen. In the end, they’re shocked at how quickly his body begins to heal itself and decide to leave him in observation, his treatment moving to pain management.

That first night, he only wakes up once. He’s lucid enough to recognize you, the pain so apparent on his face that you call down for Abigail, the night nurse.

“Ruth?” he mumbles, his voice rough and hurt. Your chair is close enough that you barely have to move to slip your fingers into his. He’s too weak to protest, so instead, the fingers of his left hand curl and squeeze around yours gently.

“‘M sorry,” he manages before he passes out again.

 

\--

 

Agent Carter gets one of the men to drive you home around dinner time the following evening, but only after a significant amount of cajoling. You’ve spent most of the day at Bucky’s bedside and you’re exhausted, smelly, and more than a little hungry. Vera’s back that night, and she quietly promises over the phone to call you if anything changes as long as you get some sleep in a proper bed.

You don’t get much sleep that night.

(You’ve always slept better with Bucky beside you.)

You’re shocked the next day when you walk in to find Bucky’s face nearly healed up, only the deep slice across his right cheekbone and badly split lip still visible. You don’t understand it, but you’re grateful none the less.

He tries to start up discussion with you a few times during the day, finally lucid as they lower his pain medication a fraction, but you can’t bring yourself to start an argument with him. You feel as raw inside as his outsides look, and you know what’s come to a head between you won’t be fixed by words at a bedside.

He tries valiantly a few more times over the following days, too, in the short bursts of wakefulness between the long bouts of sleep, but you haven’t gotten there yet, haven’t gotten over the painful sickness that grew under your ribs the second you heard Vera say Bucky’s name over the phone.

But the more you look at that terrible cut to his face that hasn’t healed as fast as the rest of him, at the wound in his abdomen packed with gauze, the more you feel your anger rising, the more you want to hash this out with him.

In the end, you blurt it out as he’s eating the red jello one of the evening nurses brings him. You didn’t catch her name, but you did catch the way she was looking at Bucky, a little sweet on him in the way all of the nurses on his ward seem to be.

“I don’t understand why you insist on punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault,” you tell him as he drags the spoon out of his mouth. It had taken you a while to really understand what Bucky had been trying to tell you over all those drunken nights, the guilty confessions freed by alcohol. “He would have done it either way. You wouldn’t have been able to stop him. I think you know that, but I also think you like blaming yourself more.”

You expect anger, but his response is more quiet consideration than irritation. It had been a bit of a jab, your frustration at the carelessness you feel he carries himself with. Which probably led to whatever stupidity got him a bullet in the gut and a face full of asphalt.

“Peggy told me…” he starts before pausing. “She told me that he blamed himself for what happened on the train.”

You raise an eyebrow. That you find hard to believe. “She said that?”

“I read between the lines, Ruth.”

You shake your head. Bucky is skilled at reading guilt where there is none to be taken. You don’t know Agent Carter that well, but you can’t imagine anyone blaming Bucky for the perfectly rational actions of his friend.

“I really didn’t know him,” you say, trying to find the right words, “but I don’t think he did it out of guilt or because he was punishing himself. He did it because he was Captain America. He saved a whole hell of a lot of people.”

Bucky’s quiet, and you know he’s running the tally in his head. Bucky is the kind of man that would sacrifice himself a thousand times over, but there are times you wonder if Bucky would trade all the people Steve Rogers saved to have him back.

“Did I ever tell you how I got these scars?” you ask, even though you know full well that you never have. “They ambushed us. Near the Austrian border. Shot up all the tents. Once they were finished with all half-dead soldiers in the med tents, they came after the rest of us. We tried to run for the forest, but they caught up with us in the valley and shot us in the back as we were running away. Just a bunch of women, a bunch of nurses.”

There’s a lack of surprise on his face that makes you wonder if he knew, if he looked it up or used whatever connections he has in the Army to find out what happened to the medical unit you were stationed with. You lean back against the chair, putting some distance between the two of you. “I turned around when Theresa got shot because of how she screamed. And I remember pain after that. Don’t remember getting shot, but I remember waking up face down, a boot on my back, pushing me into the mud.”

There’s surprise. The look on his face is horrible: a mix of sorrow and the most potent anger you’ve ever seen him wear.

“Ruth--”

You hold up a hand because you don’t want to hear what’s going to come out of his mouth. The look on his face hurts enough.

“When I came home, I was just angry. The kind of anger that burns you up inside. My mother didn’t know what the hell to do with me, so she took me to church, and you know what our priest told me? It was God. It was God’s plan, God saved me because he had a bigger plan for me. Like that was the reason my brother died over there, why all the women I served with died in that mud. Because God didn’t have a plan for them. Just for me.”

Bucky swallows hard. He’s looking straight at you - in the eyes - and you just can’t keep looking at him, so you drop your gaze to your hands. You remember when you used to clasp them just like this in supplication before you realized no one was listening.

“Terrible things happen, Bucky. To good people, to people who don’t deserve it. And there’s no goddamn reason for it. It happened to you and it happened to Steve. But he made a choice. He saved a lot of people, and he didn’t do that because he couldn’t save you, and he didn’t do that because you weren’t there to stop him. He did it because he was a good man like you.”

You don’t realize how hard you’ve been crying until Bucky reaches over to brush the tears from your face and you recoil. He looks hurt at your rejection, but you’re tired and angry, and you don’t want to pretend anymore.

You both left your bones in Europe. Your body is buried in a valley next to a mountain, submerged in mud. Bucky’s is somewhere in the Arctic, resting a mile underwater. What’s left is only a ghost of what once was.

You look at him and see that the shards no longer fit together; instead, they have begun to cut. “You don’t work for the phone company.”

He has the good grace not to try and makes excuses. You are too far for lies now anyway.

“No,” he says. “I don’t.”

 

\--

 

It’s strange sleeping in your own bed alone again. Instead of sprawling across the mattress, you always sleep curled to the left, the missing pressure of his body against your back like a phantom limb. Some nights, you can almost feel his warmth against you even though you haven’t seen Bucky - let alone shared a bed with him - in more than a month.

You didn’t leave things on good terms. You have a few bottles of cheap red wine in your pantry. The nights you can’t forget the hurt, broken look on his face when you walked out of his hospital room that last time are the nights you can go through nearly half a bottle before you feel human again, before the tightness in your chest eases enough that you can find sleep.

There’s a tuberculosis outbreak in February, which stretches the capacity of St. Mike’s to the breaking point. You start losing track of time as the shifts start to bleed together, especially after Clara and one of the new nurses end up in the ward themselves, and the hospital has you working near seven days a week.

There are days when the suffering is too much, when the sounds of the men and women in pain takes you back to the tents and the mud and the boys begging for their mothers as they bled out. Those are the days you end up the supply closet near the stairs, your back shoved into the corner and your breathing heavy in the dark, tight space. Those are the nights you want to go home and curl around Bucky, let him talk about nothing in particular until you forget about the memories that want to swallow you.

(Bucky was always good at that, at knowing when you needed him to just talk, to help take your mind away from whatever was eating at you. He did it so well that now that you’re without it, you’ve begun to realize just how much it kept you sane. )

You’re so distracted that you don’t notice when your period skips; you’ve always had a flighty cycle, particularly during times of stress, so it wouldn’t send up any red flags even if you had noticed. You manage to forget it skipped at the end of January as well, too caught up with worrying about Bucky on that goddamn hospital bed to notice much of anything at all.

At the beginning of March, right before the last cold snap of the brutal winter, you get a letter. You know without opening it that it’s from Bucky, even without a return address; you’ve always thought Bucky’s handwriting was surprisingly beautiful and practiced for a man.

The letter is slipped under your door and there’s no postmark on it, which lets you know immediately that Bucky dropped it off instead of mailing it.

The thought of him in front of your door makes your chest seize up.

You sit on your bed - the bed Bucky had only slept in a handful of times, most of your nights together spent at his place - and carefully open the envelope.

>   
>  _Dear Ruth,_
> 
> _I know this is ten kinds of cowardly and that I should be telling this to your face instead of writing it in a letter. I’ve been by your place a couple times in the past few weeks, and though I can see a light on in your window, I haven’t been able to bring myself to knock on your door. I try to be a good man, but I never was quite as brave, and so I hope you’ll forgive me this._
> 
> _We went to try and find Steve’s body in February. We barely made headway into the Arctic even with Howard Stark’s ingenuity. The water this time of year is black where it isn’t frozen, even near the surface. Freezing and dark in a way that feels endless. I can’t stand the thought of Steve down there. It’s taken me a long time to accept that Steve is gone, but I can’t accept not finding him. I need to bring him home._
> 
> _All that’s to say that I know I’ve kept things from you. I’ve told lies for both selfish and what I thought were selfless reasons, but neither is a proper excuse for it. With how I live, there will always be things that I won’t be able to tell you, but I played fast and loose with your trust. I’m so sorry. Though I’ve tried to do my best by you, Ruth, I haven’t always succeeded._
> 
> _I’ve given you space because I think you deserve it. I half wanted to climb out of that hospital bed and go after you, but it would have been selfish. I’ve missed you, though. Some days more than I thought possible._
> 
> _I know I’ve made a mess of this all, but I hope someday you’ll give me the chance to make it up to you._
> 
> _Yours faithfully,  
>  Bucky_

 

Inside the envelope is a single set of dog tags. The scarred sides feel warm as they rest on your fingers.

_JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES  
32557038_

 

\--

 

It takes you nearly a week to write the letter.

The prideful, stubborn part of yourself wants to believe that the trespasses were purely his, but you know they weren’t. He may have told more lies, but you kept more secrets, and this is yet another case of Bucky bearing the brunt of the choice of others.

You wait until you know he’ll be out before you use the key he had given you last summer. It had been a surprise, the way he’d slipped the key into your palm one morning as he left for work, you still naked and half-asleep between the sheets. You hadn’t even been seeing each other that long, but he’d pressed the flesh-warmed key into your hand and told you to keep it, that he’d be late that night, but that you should come over anyway.

(You forget that sometimes, between the memories of the coldness and the lies. How free he’d been with himself around you in the other moments, how he never made you feel like you weren’t wanted, how he opened his space to you like it was never even a consideration.)

It still smells the same. You don’t know why this surprises you, but it does. It hasn’t been long, but somehow you thought it would be different coming back, the walls would be a shade darker, that the smell would be foreign, that the feeling would be unfamiliar.

It all feels the same.

Your perfume and toothbrush are still on the counter of his bathroom, and the outfit you had left out the last time you had been at his place is still resting over the small chair by the vanity. Your copy of _The Stranger_ still lies dogeared on the left night table.

You leave the letter there, on the pillow of the right side of the bed.

You’ve never been so scared in your entire life.

 

\--

 

When you leave at the end of your shift, he’s waiting for you, resting against the hood of a car in the parking lot. You were supposed to be done shortly after midnight, but Sara had called in sick, so you’d stayed until Sylvia had made the trip in from Long Island. It’s nearly four in the morning, and spotting him, you wonder just how long he’s been waiting.

“Hi,” you say, walking up to him, pulling your cardigan over your shoulders a bit tighter. After the cold snap, the weather had turned unseasonably warm, and you’re both in clothes better suited for late spring than a March that came in like a lion.

“Hey,” Bucky answers back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. God, but he’s a gorgeous man. You’ve missed looking at him, missed the way he looks at you. Like he’s looking at you now. It makes a shock of warmth slide up your back, pool low in your belly.

“I was thinking…” he says, his voice hesitant but steady, like he’s nervous and trying to cover it. It might be the most unsure you’ve ever seen him, even though you know he’s read the letter. “Breakfast?”

Then something catches his eye, and his brow furrows.

Stepping toward you, he reaches out, his fingers brushing over your collarbone as he pulls on the mostly hidden chain resting against your neck. It only takes a gentle tug to slide it over the loose collar of your shirt and cardigan, the tags tumbling out against your chest. He wraps his fingers around them, his eyes focused on you, though you find you can’t meet them.

You remember that feeling back in camp, before the med tent and the night spent in his private tent, the one loaned to him by his friend who didn’t see the other side of the war. You remember that moment, when the men had been cheering for Captain America and Bucky had turned to look at you, bruised and beaten, but still kind. You guessed then what you had realized later, and what has been driven home by the near year you’ve spent sharing a bed - and a life, whatever the state - with this man.

Despite his flaws, Bucky Barnes is a good man. And you’re in love with him.

“Yeah,” you tell him, letting your hand come up to rest again his still wrapped around the dog tags. “I know a place that’s open all night.”


	3. to come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Justine wanted more of this. I thought it was going to be like... a thousand words. It wasn't. This is the happy ending I want for Bucky.

 

 

 

You don’t say yes the first time Bucky asks you to marry him. He asks you in his bedroom, his body spooned around yours, his hand low on your belly like he can feel the baby in there though you’re not showing at all. He waits a whole half-hour after you tell him you’re pregnant before he asks you, and though you know he’s not asking you entirely out of duty, not with how his voice sounds like it’s a second from cracking, it just isn’t right.

The pain of the separation you endured at the beginning of the year is still fresh in your mind, and though you’ve had considerably longer to come to terms with the life growing in your belly than Bucky has, it still feels foreign and unreal.

He doesn’t seem angry or upset by your refusal, which is a bit of a shock; even though he’s never been quick to anger, the last time you turned down a proposal had ended in shouts and a set of finger-shaped bruises over your wrist. Bucky just holds you a little tighter and whispers, _okay,_ into your hair like he doesn’t even need you to explain why.

When he asks you a month later, as the roundness of your stomach becomes too pronounced to hide under your normal clothes, when you can feel the stares on your empty left hand, you say yes. Clara has already begun to suspect that something’s afoot, and given you aren’t married, you know she’s going to kick up a stink the second she gets confirmation. It doesn’t really matter anyway; women aren’t allowed to work if they’re pregnant.

But that’s not why you say yes. It isn’t the lovely, simple ring he has this time, the ring you know has been hidden under his socks for the last month. It isn’t the conspicuous stares when you leave his apartment in the morning, having all but moved in with him. It’s the realization that no matter your answer, he’ll stay. You still have the same hesitations that you had back in December when he’d touched your finger and asked you if you ever thought about it, likely right when he put the baby into your belly.

But the truth is while you might still be too broken to be a wife, you’re not too broken to love Bucky Barnes.

(And it’s not just about you anymore. This sudden realization above all else is what shocks you into saying yes.)

Your mother doesn’t come to the wedding. She’s cold and silent when you call her about your marriage, instantly suspicious of the timing of it, why it’s happening so quickly, so you make your confessions. You’ve spent a long time disappointing your mother - from enlisting as an army nurse to turning down Robbie Belford’s ridiculous proposal shortly beforehand - so you know instantly that you’ve yet again let her down. You could have been marrying Howard Stark and she still would have disapproved; nothing you do will ever win her over. She’ll never forgive you for coming back instead of your brother.

She gives you a thin congratulations, tells you that she’s not sure she can make it on such short notice given her social engagements, but she’ll check her calendar and get back to you. You’re not even surprised that she doesn’t call, but instead sends a telegram that reads even colder than her voice on the phone. Your father doesn’t say a word.

Bucky’s parents are more understanding, but you see the tightness in the corner of his mother’s eyes when you exchange vows in front of a judge at city hall. You’re at about four and a half months, and the white, empire waist dress that Vera helped you find hides your condition almost perfectly. There’s only a handful of witnesses - Bucky’s parents and sister, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, two of the Howling Commandos, Vera and a few of the girls from the old shift - but none of your family shows up. Your mother’s always run the family with an iron fist, so it doesn’t surprise you that your younger siblings don’t even call.

There’s no honeymoon. Now that you’re his wife, Bucky can tell you quietly about the SSR, about what he does, though he’s forbidden from sharing any details. You hate it all instantaneously, and Bucky can tell when you smile roughly and tell him that it’s okay. You remember holding his hand in that hospital bed, staring at his swollen, broken face, and the idea that it could happen again makes your blood run cold.

He does take a few days off though, which you spend firmly wrapped around each other in bed.

The sex… well, the sex isn’t something you’re expecting. You’ve counselled a few women on sex during pregnancy, so you know it’s perfectly safe, but it feels different watching your own shift and grow. You feel an urge for him constantly, but as your belly swells and your body aches, you don’t feel one little bit attractive. You feel large and ungainly, but to your surprise, Bucky not only doesn’t mind, but seems to take a strange pleasure in it. It’s constant for him too, the way his eyes grow dark when you rest a hand on your tummy.

He gets real blue in the mouth now too, like something’s been let loose inside of him. Talks about how different you taste when he gets his shoulders between your thighs. It makes you laugh awkwardly and blush, but secretly you love it. As your stomach grows, you find it more comfortable on your hands and knees or on your side, something he seems more than willing to oblige. The talk turns possessive when he’s inside of you like that, his chest pressed against your back and his hand low on your abdomen, like he’s reminding himself what he’s made inside of you.

You lose your job at the hospital at five months. You can’t hide your pregnancy any longer, and the girls, while sad about you leaving, are thrilled at the news of a baby.

“I’m not surprised,” Ethel says with a scandalous wiggle of her eyebrows. “Christ, you could get up the stick just by looking at him. You’re gonna have one looker of a baby, Ruthie.”

No one talks about the order of things. There’s a ring on your finger and a husband’s hand on your elbow, and sometimes you wonder when the world got so shallow. Even before the war, you were never the kind of girl who gave three tugs about convention. But you’re glad for Bucky, even if it meant bending what you saw your future to be.

(Time was you never even saw a future. But those dark days after the war seem weirdly distant even though the nightmares try to keep them fresh.)

Bucky’s mother is a godsend. Your medical training has given you an edge up on enduring your pregnancy, but Bucky’s mother is the one who comes round with the ginger tea that gets you through the sixth month, when you suddenly can’t seem to keep food down. She’s the one who calls and fusses and wants to hear about the baby kicking, about the crib that you and Bucky decided on at the end of the seventh month, about the houses you’ve been looking at near the park. The absence of your family isn’t something any of you talk about, but you know Bucky’s said something to his mother given the frequency with which she calls on you, how she dotes the way your mother never really did even when she wasn’t furious with you..

“She likes adopting stray ducklings,” Bucky says, tucking a strand of your hair that has come loose from your bun behind your ear. He has such a fond look on his face that you know he’s thinking of Steve. The Barnes family doesn’t talk much about him, but there are small mementos around their home, memories of the boy that Bucky considered to be a brother. But it’s not cold and sad, not like Thomas; there’s a sorrow in losing Steve, but there’s a brightness in his memory, too.

“Quack quack,” you honk at him, and the smile he gives you is blinding, full of humour that you rarely see in him. He ducks down and kisses you, ending it with a tender bite to your bottom lip that has your insides lighting up like a Catherine wheel.

 

\--

  

Around the eight month mark, when your belly is so large that walking has become a strenuous activity and you need help pulling yourself out of bed, Bucky starts getting fidgety. It ends with him taking the knitting from your hands one Sunday night as you’re listening to the radio, shuffling close to you on the couch with a face serious enough that your heart starts to race a bit.

“You remember Azzano?” he asks you, knowing perfectly well that you do. You nod, so he continues. “When Steve came to rescue me,” he says, his voice catching on Steve’s name, “they had been doin’ things to me.”

You remember the marks on Bucky’s body in that tent. They hadn’t been horrible, but you knew the signs of torture well enough to know that he’d been more than just a simple POW. Bucky had spoken little about his time spent during the war, and absolutely nothing about when he’d been captured by the Nazis. “I know,” you say, running a thumb over the pulse at his wrist.

He flips his hand into yours and clutches at it desperately. “No , you don’t.”

“What?”

The weird shame on his face breaks your heart. “They did stuff to me. Gave me-- shot me full of something. That’s why I heal so fast. Why I survived that fall.” That had always been a surprise to you; the body is capable of remarkable things, but you knew enough about that pass through the Alps to know he fell hundreds of feet. It was a fall that no man should have ever survived, scars or not. And though he may still carry the scars from that fall, the gunshot wounds from his accident at the beginning of the year have almost completely disappeared.

“They experimented on me, Ruth,” he says, squeezing your hand. Your face twists up at the thought of Bucky being strapped to a table, at these… _monsters_ experimenting on a good man. Hurting him. A tear slips down your cheek and Bucky’s face breaks. “Oh no, please don’t. Please, sweetheart.” He wipes at a tear and kisses your cheek. “I barely remember any of it,” he says, and you know a lie from him when you hear it, but you let it go, try not to let it hurt you.

The baby must feel the anxiety because it lets out an almighty kick right into your lung and you gasp a breath, your hand falling to the top of your prominent belly. Bucky’s hand quickly slips over yours, feeling the baby move underneath. “I’m scared,” he says quietly. “I’m scared whatever they did to me will--”

He doesn’t finish the thought.

 

\--

 

Bucky’s mother believes with complete conviction that you’re carrying a boy, and takes to knitting you a wide variety of clothes in shades of blue and green.

So it’s only fitting that Rose Sarah Barnes is born three weeks early and decided _not_ a boy.

The labour is not easy, and by the time you hit nearly twenty hours of horrific contractions, you hear Bucky’s voice outside your room barking orders. They hadn’t let him in the room even though you wouldn’t have minded it and Bucky had secretly wanted it; in all your years of nursing, you’ve only seen two husbands allowed in a birthing room, and in both cases, their wives had been near death. One had died right along with her newborn boy.

They’re talking about cutting you open when something finally happens, and a voice in your ear is telling you to push. You’re nearly delirious with exhaustion and feel like crying, but then a more familiar voice is talking to you, soothing, a hand slipping into yours, and when you finally open your eyes, you want to weep again, this time with relief.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Bucky says, his face pinched with fear.

It’s another twenty minutes of pushing and crying, Bucky’s hand wiping the sweaty hair from your forehead and whispering encouragements to you, before she’s finally born. You feel the baby leave you in a rush, like some essential part of you has suddenly left your body, and you feel bereft of something you can’t really define.

Your eyes close, no energy left to keep them open.

“It’s a girl.”

“A girl?” Bucky’s voice is filled with such a light, beautiful wonder that if you had the energy, you’d smile. But you don’t. All you want to do is sleep, to rest. Every inch of you is tired, aching.

“Ruth?” All the joy is gone from his voice, the tone frantic as a hand slips back into yours to squeeze. “Hey, hey, what’s going on with her?”

You slip into sleep.

Later, Vera tells you as you feed your little girl that she could hear Bucky screaming at the doctors all the way from the other end of the ward.

 

\--

 

The nightmares don’t stop after Rose. They ease in their frequency and severity, but Bucky still sweats and whispers names, you still cry out in your sleep.

It does make the nighttime feedings easier, though. Neither of you sleep heavy, and your daughter seems to have inherited both of her parents bad sleep habits. Ann Marie had groused to you that her husband had simply rolled over at night after their daughter had been born, leaving her to the nighttime work, but you’re shocked when Bucky rouses before you do, shushing and bouncing Rose as he brings her over to you to feed.

Even on the worst of nights, when you’re both tired and Bucky has work the next morning, he still presses his lips to your temple when he settles your girl into your arms, still touching her chubby little hands like he doesn’t really want to let her go.

You’ll never get tired of the reverent look on his face when he watches his daughter suckle at your breast. You can’t believe how much love you have for such a small, pink, helpless little creature, and the knowledge that her father - your husband, you think with a sharp shock - loves her as much as you do fills you with a comfort you haven’t felt since before the war.

You feel safe.

 

\--

 

Around the time she turns one, Rose begin to walk with a balance and speed that takes you by surprise. She’s always been a clever baby, ahead of the pack, but she suddenly has a development spurt that takes both you and Bucky by surprise. You have a small group of friends in the neighbourhood, and a few have children around Rose’s age, but she’s taller and stronger and playing at a level that leaves them all distantly behind. The other mothers are too kind to say anything, but as the months pass, it becomes more and more obvious just how _different_ Rose seems.

It comes to a head one day when you’re downstairs, packing for a trip over to his parents’ place for Sunday supper. One second everything is as right as rain, and the next, you hear the excited babble of your daughter at the top of the stairs, Bucky’s voice calling her name from one of the rooms down the hall.

“Rose,” you manage to squeak before time grinds to a halt, your daughter’s leg shakily hitting the first step as her body pitches forward, tumbling down the steep, long set of stairs. You let out a horrified scream that you can barely hear, but must sound blood curdling given the speed with which you see Bucky fly down the hall toward their falling daughter.

It is not an easy fall. You hear her scared, pained yelp as she hits one of the steps towards the end, and you feel like you’re being ripped apart from the inside.

Rose’s body lies limp at the bottom of the stairs, rolling to a stop near the bannister. Your heart stops inside your chest for a second, your hands shaking. Then, like being struck by lightning, you dash forward, your hand resting on the warm back of your unmoving daughter.

“ _Bucky!”_ you scream, tears starting to dash down your cheeks as Bucky takes the steps four at a time, flying down beside you.

Bucky looks beyond terrified. “Don’t move her!” he says, his voice filled with the same fear that’s running through your veins, and when you see him reach for her little arm, searching for a pulse, you sob, “Oh please god, please, please. Please, god.”

And maybe your god has started listening to you again, because four hours later, you’re sitting with Rose cradled in your lap, the emergency room doctor staring at you, unable to give you many answers. Rose has a nasty bump on her forehead and a few serious cuts and scrapes, but Dr. Underwood tells you that he’s shocked there’s no sign of major concussion, no skull fractures or major breaks given the fall you describe to him.

“You’re very lucky,” he tells you, and you look to Bucky, and know that luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.

That night, you and Bucky watch Rose sleep in her crib from the hall for nearly an hour. You watch her tiny little chest rise and fall rhythmically and nearly cry with relief. You’ve never been so grateful for anything in your entire life.

But beside you, you can feel just how torn Bucky is. It practically radiates off of him.

“She’s got it,” he says softly. The guilt is nearly palpable, and it hurts you to hear how much responsibility he feels for your child. “Whatever they did to me…”

“Whatever they did to you kept her alive,” you say, remembering the way Rose’s neck hit that last step. It should have broken. With that force and that angle, any other child would have broken their neck. “I don’t care. I don’t care why. She’s alive.”

In the morning, Rose greets you with a happy smile as you reach into her crib, gurgling something that sounds like, _Mah mah mah_ , over and over. The bump on her head has disappeared, and the cuts and scrapes on her hands have completely healed over, and you can see the wobble to Bucky’s mouth when he notices the same as you heft her over to him.

“How’s my best girl?” he asks Rose in one of the wateriest tones you’ve ever heard from him, and a tear slides down his cheek when Rose squeals loudly and shoves herself under his chin, grabbing at the chain of his dogtags.

 

\--

 

“I’m quitting,” he tells you one morning over breakfast.

You don’t talk much about his job; he can’t tell you much and he knows you hate what he does. It’s the one real sorespot in your marriage, but it’s gotten less tender over the past year.

“Are you sure?” you ask, thinking about all the bills you have to pay; you didn’t have much savings before you were forced to quit your job at the hospital, and though Bucky has always been responsible with his money, you can’t do without an income for long. But that’s not all you’re thinking about. Even though you’ve always hated his job, you’ve always secretly thought it keeps him sane in a way. “Please, don’t on my beha--”

Bucky interrupts you. “It’s not you, Ruthie.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Don’t worry about the money - I’ve gotten a few offers that pay better than the SSR.”

“You know that’s not why I’m worried.” You think about that letter, about why Bucky has stayed with SSR as long as he has. He had promised to find Steve, and the idea that he’s giving up on that fills you with a kind of dread.

The side of Bucky’s mouth slips up, not really a smile. “I know,” he says, cutting his grapefruit in half and sliding one of the halves onto your plate.

A few weeks later, you’re surprised to find Peggy Carter on the other side of your front door. She smiles at you and apologizes in her crisp British accent for disturbing your Saturday afternoon. You call up to Bucky gently, who’s putting Rose down for her nap, and bring Peggy into the living room.

Bucky’s grim face when he sees Peggy standing next to you is shocking. You know you’re missing a piece of the puzzle, and normally you’d be curious, but instead you just excuse yourself to make tea for them.

The house you’d bought near Prospect Park is big and airy, and though it’s a devil to heat in the winter and you have to walk on eggshells not to make enough noise to wake Rose during her nap even though she’s on the second floor, you love it.

You can also hear Bucky and Peggy’s conversation quite clearly even though the kitchen is a healthy distance from the living room. You miss the first bit running water for the kettle, but as soon as it’s on the stove, the voices are crisp and clear in the sunny room.

“I don’t know why you thought I’d change my mind. I told you what I want,” Bucky says. “Please stop trying to change my mind about this. Don’t come here and make Ruth worry about it more than she probably is.”

“You think working for Howard doesn’t come with strings?” Peggy asks. “Steve would want us to continue what he started. You and I both know what’s out there, James.”

“They stopped looking for him, Peg.” Bucky’s voice is filled with pain. “They gave up on him. He saved all their fucking lives, and they just give up on finding him?” He takes a deep breath. “I know what’s out there, but I can’t do this job anymore. I got more to think about than just myself now. I’ve got Ruth and Rose, and what happens to them if I don’t come back? Steve would want me to live for my family as much as he’d want you to _live your life,_ Pegs.”

The silence is near deafening, but it doesn’t come close to the devastation you hear in Peggy’s voice when she says, “It’s not that simple, James.”

 

\--

 

The fall brings a lot of change. You never pushed Bucky about his conversation with Peggy, but you do know that he doesn’t quit his job at the SSR. He is, however, seconded to Stark Industries, made VP of some department with an indecipherable name. He doesn’t talk much about his work, but he doesn’t come home with scraped knuckles or bruises that heal too quick anymore.

He does travel more, which you don’t like. But he seems to hate it even more than you do, clutching at you and Rose when you meet him in a car that Stark sends for you when Bucky returns at the private airport

When you see him packing his extra heavy coats, long johns and thick wool socks for the next trip, you don’t really need to ask him where he’s going.

At Christmas, Bucky’s father keeps Rose in his lap for the entirety of dinner, happily playing with his granddaughter. Bucky stares rapt as his father lets Rose practically climb him, fussing with his bowtie and playing with his callused hands.

Somehow, you don’t imagine Bucky or even Rebecca ever received the same luxury.

The two of them have a private conversation before you leave, and you see Bucky’s father reach out and grip Bucky’s shoulder in the closest thing you’ve seen to a hug between them.

On the drive home, Bucky is quieter than normal, reaching over at red lights to touch the silky soft dark hair crowning Rose’s sleeping head pillowed against your chest.

“Thank you,” he says.

That night, when Rose is asleep in her crib and Bucky’s inside of you, your thighs tucked up around his ribcage, the angle so sweet you feel like you could just stay like this forever, you hear him whisper it again, over and over.

_Thank you thank you thank you..._

 

\--

 

Steven Gabriel Barnes is born just over two years later. Bucky bursts into tears when the nurse hands him his son with the little cuff wrapped around his ankle, BABY BOY BARNES written crudely on it.

You haven’t spoken about names for this one, because you’d known deep down it was a boy, and you both knew what you were going to name him.

Rose climbs into her father’s lap, desperate to see her new brother, and you can’t help but smile at how carefully she scales her father so she doesn’t disturb his arms. Bucky smiles down at Rose with such a beautifully loving look on his face that everything inside of you clenches up with emotion.

“This is Steven,” Bucky says to his inquisitive daughter, who babbles the name back to him like a little parrot. Rose is a daddy’s girl beyond what even you were expecting given how blindly in love Bucky is with his daughter; you thought once that you would be jealous, that you’d want her to cling to you, but you’ve also been witness to the change she’s had on him. There will always be a damaged part of him that you’ll never be able to touch - that no one will - but he’s slept sounder since she was born, taken care of himself in a way he never did before he had someone whose life he was responsible for.

After a few minutes, Bucky snugs Rose to his chest and lowers Steven into her small arms, supporting enough of his weight that Rose can cradle him to her chest a bit. “He’s your baby brother, so it’s your job to protect him, Rosie,” Bucky whispers quietly against Rose’s temple, smiling as he watches his little girl stare in wonder at the tiny, working mouth of her brother.

Bucky turns his head to look at you. “You make some beautiful babies, sweetheart,” he says with a tender smile.

You fall asleep to the sound of Rose babbling at her brother and Bucky’s light laughter.

 

\--

 

A year later, Steven Barnes meets the man he was named after when his father finds Captain America trapped alive in the dark ice of the Arctic.


End file.
